A magical thing happens in New England around September. Not the leaves changing color (though city-folk who've never seen a tree before are mystified as a hobo with a bar of soap). Not kids going back to school. Or even Major League Baseball play-offs. If you see anything professional there, it's likely caused by steroids. No. I'm talking about apple picking.
Children have one of their too few weekends torn from them, forced to endure hours in a crowded car with asshole sibling cellmates, listening to CAT STEVEN'S GREATEST HITS by the warden.
The orchard's duped every knucklehead roaming the field. Cutting out the supermarket and the labor should lower the prices. Instead, the privilege of picking Farmer Brown's pommes will cost you double what you could pay in the store only a five minute drive from your house. Assuming you can find a parking space among the other hoodwinkees clamoring to help Tom Sawyer whitewash his fence.
Republicans have the wrong idea. Rather than creating stiffer illegal immigrant policies, hire an ad agency to create a campaign letting Americans know how much fun it is to mow a lawn, pick strawberries, or make your own fucking coffee. Within a year, it'd be easier to find a horseshoe salesman than a Mexican. Unless they adapt by scoring jobs gathering all the abandoned 5 gallon Home Depot buckets left in front of boarded up Dunkin Donuts.
The last time I went, we paid twenty bucks for a medium sized bag and filled it in ten minutes despite acting more critical than an emotionally crippled mother at a children's beauty pageant.
“No. Not that one.” Toss.
“Too green.” Toss.
“Wormhole.” Toss.
“Apple.” Toss.
So then we get to leave, right? WRONG! I knew there was a reason I was asked to wear my sweatshirt.
With three in each pocket, a half dozen in the hood, and the front stuffed from waist to collarbone, we shuffle past security (consisting of two 15 year old girls) covered in apple shaped tumors bulging from every clothed part of our body. I tried to suck in my cheekbones to appear as sickly and cancer-ridden as a guy 30 pounds overweight can. They didn't buy it. Nor did they give a shit. We paid roughly five bucks a pounds for apples. The only one we outsmarted was evolution.
Apple picking coaxes the uglier, greedier side of humanity. The entire time I was there, it looked like a fucking apple eating contest. Kids ran around, snatching apples off trees only to take a single bite, and tossing the rest over their shoulders while in pursuit of the next fruit. Maybe med students should spend autumn in the fields to better understand why sexually transmitted diseases seem to spread easier than warm butter.
Old folks have it all figured out. After all, it's their 80th time. They back up their Toyota Avalons to the fence, gain entrance through purchasing the smallest bag possible, and spend the day lobbing fruit over the fence into the open trunks on the other side. I can't imagine how brazen the elderly would become if there were a starlight mint hard candy orchard. Or a grandchild's love orchard. Could probably get that cheaper at home too. I used to sell mine for a quarter. But those are 1980's prices and have not been adjusted for inflation.
I bet you're thinking: What the fuck are we gonna do with all these apples? That's funny. I asked the same thing when, running out of options, I was trying to conceal a cortland up my ass like a rubber full of heroin. They didn't ask me to do that, but I felt obligated to try. No one would answer the apple question. Or shake my hand.
The GOOGLE spike for apple recipes must be astronomical in the fall. Suburbs reek of apples and cinnamon for months. Children get rewarded for their lost weekend by having all sorts of housewife misfires snuck into the bag lunches in desperate maternal hopes that if the kids throw it away, at least they won't tell mom they did it.
In a couple months, when your shitty produce investment is a mere vapor in the landscape of your mind, and while rooting through your fridge for a snack, you find a long forgotten apple crisp triple wrapped in aluminum foil, do us all a favor:
TOSS.
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